STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Alicia Zayas says her fiancé, Anthony Casalaspro, was a good man, a city sanitation mechanic who stepped up to help raise her children, according to the New York Post.
Now, she’s mourning his brutal death and pleading for understanding as her son, 19-year-old Damien Hurstel, faces murder charges in one of Staten Island’s most horrifying crimes in recent memory.
“He didn’t have to do that,” Zayas said in an interview with the New York Post. “Anthony was helping me raise my kids. He was a great man.”
An investigator inspects the front porch of the home at Cary Avenue.(Advance/SILive.com | Scott Axelrod)
Hurstel is accused of stabbing Casalaspro to death and decapitating him inside the family’s West Brighton home.
Hurstel allegedly showed his 16-year-old sister Bri the mutilated body and asked, “Do you want her (Zayas) to live?” during a terrifying encounter, Zayas recounted in the New York Post interview.
Zayas said Bri fled behind the family’s shed and called her in a panic. After racing home, Zayas said she found her son in the kitchen.
“He said he was cleaning,” she said. “Like he was doing dishes. His eyes looked different…dark, like something had changed.”
After discovering the horrific murder scene in the bathroom, Zayas said she called 911 and begged responding officers not to hurt her son.
‘This was preventable’
Zayas said she hopes to expose what she describes as a catastrophic failure of the mental health system.
“This was preventable,” she said to the New York Post. “Something is seriously wrong with my son. He wasn’t like this before.”
Hurstel’s defense attorney, Mark Fonte, previously told the Advance/SILive.com that the accused killer suffered from multiple mental illnesses.
“It’s my understanding—again, this is just a cursory review of some of his medical records—he had an antipsychotic medication, bipolar medication, schizophrenic medication, kind of the whole gambit of mental health issues,” Fonte said.
“And it’s very sad,” he continued. “It’s very sad that anyone would have to go through life suffering from these chronic mental health issues. And it’s also sad that in this country, we really don’t address the mental health crisis that’s going on.”
Fonte also called Hurstel’s mental health history “long and tortured.”
Zayas told the NY Post that Hurstel began struggling with mental illness at age 6, after his father went to prison. Damien was hospitalized twice after suicide attempts but stabilized by age 14.
Fonte told the Advance/SILive.com that until Hurstel turned 18 “the family was on top of him with respect to his psychiatric medication and doctor’s visits and hospitalizations, as any caring family would be.”
But once an adult, Fonte said, “the doctors were no longer allowed to speak to the family and extended family about his medical treatment. So they had to rely solely on the patient to determine what medication he’s supposed to be on, how he was feeling, was he compliant with his treatment protocols.
“And that’s where things started going haywire.”
Fonte said that strife began in the household as discussions about medication and Hurstel’s treatment became confrontational.
The two attorneys hired by the family, Fonte and Louis Gelormino, are now working to obtain Hurstel’s full psychiatric history.
Zayas also said in the interview that her son had violently beat her on her birthday last year after she asked him to clean the kitchen; she insists that Casalaspro was never abusive.
“He loved my kids,” she said. “He loved Damien.”
Doctors hold defendant in murder case
In the latest developments in the case on Friday, Hurstel remained hospitalized at Richmond University Medical Center, as prosecutors submitted an indictment on charges that include second-degree murder and concealment of a human corpse in connection with the slaying Monday.
Hurstel was ordered held from appearing in the courtroom amid concerns over his psychiatric condition, according to court proceedings and sources with knowledge of the case.
Family of the defendant, including his mother, uncle and cousin, have shown up to court each of the past three days in an attempt to see him.
Judge Raja Rajeswari adjourned the case to Oct. 16 in state Supreme Court, St. George, in light of the grand jury indictment.
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